“You want me to check?”
She nodded. I went to the door, opened it half an inch. Isabel was not there.
“All clear,” I reported.
“Pull up a chair,” Elizabeth said. I did and, leaning in, got as close to her as I could. “You look good,” she said. “Considering everything.”
I smiled. “I suppose.”
“Don’t even bother to tell me the same. I know how I look. I look like shit.”
“You still have that sparkle in your eye.”
“You were always my favorite. I mean, of the ones my children married. Favorite in-law. Oh, I don’t mean to put down Norman and Dierdre, but I always had a soft spot in my heart for you.”
I sighed. “Until.”
Elizabeth’s eyes closed for a moment. “I know. I allowed Izzy to let me believe the worst about you. But now I realize I misjudged you, wronged you.”
She held out her hand and I took it, gave it a gentle squeeze. Her fingers felt like twigs cloaked in old linen.
“I’ve seen her,” Elizabeth said. “So I know you never did her any harm.”
“Isabel told me. In the night.” I felt obliged to add, “Isabel thinks you imagined it, and she might be right.”
“I know what I saw.” She returned the squeeze. “I can’t explain it. I don’t know where she’s been, and I don’t know why she’s been in hiding. The whole thing is a huge mystery, but knowing that she’s alive, right now, it’s enough for me. I wasn’t prepared to believe it at first. It was just too fantastical. But now... Anyway, that’s why I’ve brought you here, to tell you I’m sorry. So very, very sorry for doubting you, for thinking you could have done something so horrible.”
Accept her apology, or not? I did some quick ethical calculations, the way a math whiz might solve a complicated equation in his head in seconds.
I said, “All is forgiven.”
She smiled. “Thank you, Andrew. That means more to me than you could know.”
I thought maybe we were done, but when I went to pull my hand away she clung to it.
“Don’t go so soon,” she said. “This is probably the last time I’m ever going to see you. I want to talk.”
“Okay.”
“How are you doing these days?”
I shrugged. “You probably know this, but I changed my last name. I’m Andrew Carville now.”
“Oh, that has a nice ring to it,” Elizabeth said. “You don’t have to tell me why. I can guess. Whatever it cost you to have it done, you should send the bill to Izzy. And what about work?”
“I manage,” I said.
“And... are you... did you...”
“Remarry?” I said. “No. But there is someone. Her name is Jayne, and she’s moved in with me.”
Her face fell. “Oh my. It’s going to be so difficult for her. Having to give you up.”
I said nothing.
“Do you think Jayne — is that what you said her name is?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think Jayne will understand?”
I had no idea how to address that question. Elizabeth wasn’t too far gone to notice my hesitation.
“Andrew, promise me something.”
“What’s that, Elizabeth?”
“You’ll forgive Brie. Whatever the reason was that she left, whatever she’s done all this time, that you will forgive her.”
“Yes, of course.”
“And take her back.”
I forced a smile and gave her hand a squeeze. “How could I not?”
I was glad Isabel was not in the room to hear me make a promise that I had no idea how to keep.
She looked relieved. “Well, that’s good. Now we only have to worry about the IRS wondering why she hasn’t filed a tax return in six years.”
Amazingly, we both had a chuckle over that. But very quickly, her expression grew serious, and she said, “You know, Jackson and I did our best.”
“I’m sure,” I said, not certain where this was going but content to wait.
“My three — Brie and Izzy and Albert — I love them all, you know. But I know none of them has ever been perfect. Made mistakes. Things with Albert and Dierdre aren’t very good these days.”
“I didn’t know that. I always thought they were pretty solid.”
“I suppose they were at one time, but... Anyway, and then there’s Izzy and Norman, that poor man. He must be some kind of saint to put up with her. How did she become so judgmental?” Before I could answer, she offered a theory. “I think she always wanted to make more of herself. You know she had dreams of becoming a lawyer.”
“I know. Thing is, Elizabeth, we’re all wired our own way. You did everything right.”
Elizabeth chortled. “That’s why I always liked you. You’re such a good liar.” She still had not let go of my hand. “Maybe it’s a generational thing. Maybe young people today — well, younger, I mean, none of you are kids anymore — maybe they don’t have the same values. They don’t cherish fidelity.”
“I plead guilty,” I said.
“Oh, not just you,” she said. “You know how I know you’re a good man, that you could never have done anything to hurt Brie?”
“How?” I replied slowly.
“Because of the secret you kept. The one you could have revealed, but never did. I don’t think I’d have been able to behave as honorably if I’d been in your position.”
“That’s not quite true,” I said, reasonably sure what she was referring to. “I told Detective Hardy. But she cleared him. It couldn’t have been him. He went to Boston that night. He had an airtight alibi, as they say. Me, not so much.”
“Even so, you could have told others what he’d done. One person in particular.”
“What would have been the point of that? And I’d have had to dishonor Brie to do it. I wasn’t going to do that. None of this matters now, Elizabeth. It’s the distant past.”
“Brie told me. She told me everything.”
I did not know that.
“When?” I asked.
“A month or two before she disappeared. We could always talk, you know.” She took a breath. “Can you hand me that glass of water?” I handed her the glass. Her mouth moistened, she continued. “There Isabel was, making your life hell, and still you held your tongue.”
“Ruining Isabel’s life wouldn’t have done anything to make me look any less culpable.”
“Norman’s never thanked you, has he?” Elizabeth asked. “Never expressed any gratitude that you didn’t tell Isabel that her husband had slept with her own sister.”
“I’ve never sought it,” I said. “He doesn’t owe me a damn thing. It was a long time ago.”
“It’s never too late to offer regrets,” Elizabeth said. “Why do you think I wanted to see you before I’m gone?”
Thirty
More than a few people slept poorly Saturday night to Sunday morning. Matt Beekman was among them.
He didn’t get back to New Haven after his Hartford assignment until three in the morning. There was a note on the kitchen counter from his wife, Tricia, that there was a plate of Chinese food in the fridge. He took it out, reheated it in the microwave, but could only pick at it. He’d lost his appetite on the drive home, thinking about what might have gone wrong six years earlier.
Matt went up to bed, slipping carefully under the covers so as not to wake his wife, and stared at the ceiling until almost five, at which point his mind could dwell no longer on events of the past, and he fell asleep. But he was startled awake by Tricia shortly after seven as she pulled back the covers and put her feet on the floor.
“When’d you get in?” she asked.
“Around three,” he mumbled into the pillow.
“Did you get paid?”
“What?”
“Did you get paid? For the job?”